The Danube

I remember standing on the veranda of a hostel in Budapest. It was on an island at the centre of the Danube, its waters glimmering in the ardent evening sun; muddy browns were glazed with a deep red and looked all the prettier for it, whilst warm wind huffed against my arms and neck. I recognised it then as a moment of mysticism and, in retrospect, it took on an almost mythic quality. Leaning over the railings and looking down I saw joggers heaving their way along a running track that, I later discovered, encircled much of the island. Sweat dripped from their foreheads and formed abstract patterns on their t-shirts (a drop of sweat tacked and tickled along my temple). Whether running alone with music in their ears or running in groups chatting to each other between deep breaths, all of them had smiles that said they were simply happy to be in this midsummer sun. Like me. As though activated by encroaching night my sunburn was beginning to blossom across my shoulders but that didn’t matter because with it came the fervent buzzing of life: the chatter of humans, the squawking of gulls, the muttering of insects gradually awakening for their nocturnal life, even the gentle hissing of fountains somewhere behind the trees and the slurping Danube – all these buzzzzzzed and I was drawn to it. They turned the air into music and the molecules of my body hummed in concert. Alchemists had spent five thousand years in pursuit of transformation but it had taken only ten minutes for me. This was perfection for a withered soul like mine. Simmering in the moment’s warmth, draped with the setting sun’s pink light, I remember standing on the veranda as I watched my mother die. She had been stabbed seventeen times with a kitchen knife. By me. I had to do it because it was the only true path of transformation; the alchemists should have looked a little closer to home. And now I’m going to Hell for it, I know, so I better get used to the heat.